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Investors Unfriend Facebook As SEC Investigates IPO “Issues”

By DAVID LIEBERMAN, Executive Editor | Tuesday May 22, 2012 @ 1:07pm PDTTags: Facebook, IPO

Facebook IPO IssuesUPDATE, 2:30 PM: Massachusetts Secretary of Commonwealth William Galvin is conducting his own investigation into what Morgan Stanley told big investors about Facebook, and when the disclosures took place. A spokesman tells Reuters that the office has issued a subpoena to Morgan Stanley regarding “the analyst’s discussion with certain institutional investors about the revenue prospects for Facebook.”

PREVIOUS, 1:07 PM: Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg may rue the day he agreed to take his company public. The share price fell 8.9% today — to $31.01, or $6.99 below the offering price on Friday — after SEC chairman Mary Schapiro said that her agency plans to investigate “issues” involving the IPO. While she wasn’t specific, her comment came as Reuters reported that the consumer Internet analyst for Morgan Stanley, Facebook’s lead underwriter, recently slashed his revenue forecasts for Q2 and all of 2012 — and that news was passed along to institutional investors during the company’s road show but not to the public. If true, then it could have violated laws that bar companies from selectively disclosing important information to certain shareholders. It also could explain why institutional buyers chose not to buy Facebook shares as the price fell on Monday and today. “This is a classic example of investor greed, including institutional greed and underwriter greed and company greed,” Vanguard CEO Jack Bogle said on CNBC. ”So the message is, when all the parties to a transaction are greedy, this is the kind of outcome you can expect.” Yesterday, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority said it will review what happened on Friday, when investors trading about 30M Facebook shares weren’t given confirmations for their transactions, a major snafu.

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Facebook Secrets In Filing For $5B IPO

By DAVID LIEBERMAN, Executive Editor | Wednesday February 1, 2012 @ 2:16pm PSTTags: Facebook, IPO, Mark Zuckerberg

Facebook IPOThe Facebook filing values Mark Zuckerberg stake at $16 billion. Facebook said its 27-year-old founder and CEO owns more than a  quarter of the company, or roughly 534 million shares. Those are just some of the numbers in the SEC filing to issue stock that … Read More »

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WSJ: Bankers Fighting Over Facebook IPO

By DAVID LIEBERMAN, Executive Editor | Friday January 27, 2012 @ 12:06pm PSTTags: Facebook, IPO

One of the tech world’s most eagerly anticipated public offerings could take place next week, with Facebook potentially raising about $10B from shares that would value the company at as much as $100B, The Wall Street Journal … Read More »

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Is Facebook Worth More than $100B?

By DAVID LIEBERMAN, Executive Editor | Tuesday November 29, 2011 @ 7:23am PSTTags: Facebook, Google, Groupon, IPO, Mark Zuckerberg Facebook

That’s the valuation that the king of social media hopes investors will accept as it considers whether to make one of the biggest public stock offerings ever this spring, The Wall Street Journal reports. The paper says that Mark Zuckerberg’s company wants to raise $10B and could file documents at the SEC to begin the process by the end of this year. Visa, General Motors, and AT&T Wireless are the only U.S. companies that have collected more than $10B in an initial public offering. Up to now, Zuckerberg has been cool to the idea of going public, which would require Facebook to disclose a lot of information about its finances. But he may have to give the public a peek even if he keeps the company private: He’ll have more than 500 investors by year end, the Journal says, and the SEC requires companies that cross that threshold to open up about some of their numbers. The figures are sure to be impressive: The company is believed to generate more than $4B a year in revenue. Read More »

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Software Firm MobiTV Files For $75M IPO

By THE DEADLINE TEAM | Wednesday August 31, 2011 @ 5:02pm PDTTags: CBS, Disney, Fox, IPO

Banking on the smart phone  boom continuing, the 12-year-old maker of software that enables users to watch live TV today filed to raise as much as $75M in an IPO. The filing did not indicate how many shares it will offer … Read More »

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